First things first: I’d like to publicly thank the people who Googled the following terms and inexplicably decided to click on the link that led them to NGIP:
The other thing I called this meeting for is to discuss the outrageousness that is the price of Rosetta Stone language software. I’ve seen the commercials, how anybody who is anybody uses the Rosetta Stone to learn a new language. A list of very important organizations, like the US Army and the State Department and Fortune 500 companies and God use the Rosetta Stone for their language learning needs.
Well, it turns out that big entities use it because it’s SO DANG FRICKIN’ EXPENSIVE that us little people can’t afford it.
I had no idea. In my world, this software had a price tag of maybe $100 to learn the whole language. But then I get this email the other day from a big box bookstore who shall remain nameless (starts with a “B” and rhymes with “Borders”) advertising that I could get as much as $125 off. As much as? AS MUCH AS? Do you know what this means? Well, first of all, it means that it costs more than $125. Secondly, if you can save as much as $125, then that means there are ways to save LESS THAN $125.
Sure enough, a closer look at this so-called “coupon” revealed it’s true colors, but the advertising terrorists already won, didn’t they, because I clicked on the link in my email. As it turns out, Rosetta Stone comes in Parts, not Wholes, so if you buy a really big big part, that’s how you can save $125, but if you buy a teeny tiny part, you save a correspondingly teeny tiny part of $125.
When it comes to TV programming, I ignore commercials. I totally tune out. I get that from my Dad, the tuning out thing, although we have different objects of tune-outability. For example, I can’t hear the TV at all if there is any other voice happening in the room. My dad ,on the other hand, can’t hear YOU if the TV is on. I’ve never seen a man become so dazed and lose all sense of his surroundings than when he’s glued to the boob tube. Short of hitting him, you can usually get his attention if you yell his name, but more often than not saying “the phone’s ringing”, will work. You don’t even have to yell it. In fact, I remember when I was a kid, my mom played a joke on him as he snored on the couch. She leaned over his ear and said in a small voice, the phone’s ringing, and he lept up to answer it. And then we all laughed. Yeah, good times…where was I? Oh, right. Rosetta Stone and TV commercials. My point here was that I must not have been paying attention to their commercials enoughto see how much it actually cost, although it was probably snuck in so that all you heard was $29.99 or something, not realizing that it was “436 easy payments of…”.
Getting down to real numbers, there are FIVE LEVELS of Rosetta Stone with Level 1 costing $259 ($199 at Amazon) and the price going nowhere but up after that.
In Level 1, you will learn “greetings and introductions”. If you shell out several more hundreds of dollars for Level 2, you will learn how to tell time and dine out. I think you can guess the rest of this whole sham.
I currently subscribe to a Spanish language learning podcast, and since it’s free, I don’t feel the pressure that I have to learn it. Which is why 159 unlistened-to episodes have piled up into my iPod. But they’re FREE!
So, is Rosetta Stone like an expensive gym, where if you pay (and pay a LOT) you will use it because by golly you paid hundreds maybe thousands of dollars to join it?
I’m telling you this Rosetta Stone thing is a conspiracy. Level 1 probably brainwashes you into thinking you NEED Level 2 (because you’re going to be in a foreign country and you’ll need to actually get out of the airport). And then Level 2 brainwashes you into thinking you NEED level 3 (because you’re going to be in a foreign country and you WILL have to use the restroom at some point). And so on. How else can you justify spending THAT kind of money? It’s crazy! It’s insane! Why would anybody pay that kind of dinero when Level 1 only teaches you how to say hello and goodbye? I already know how to say hello and goodbye in Spanish. I mean, isn’t it like, “Aloha” and…. no wait, it’s “Buenos Dias” and “Gracias”, right?
I suspect each level contains Latin Kool-Aid and anybody gullible enough to pay THAT kind of money will drink it, and drink it hard.
What’s so fabulous about this learning software whose cost is equivalent to its weight in Manolo Blahniks? According to the product features listed on Amazon (and I’m quoting here):
“Rosetta Stone teaches you a new language naturally, by getting you to think, live and breathe the language”
Breath the language? Really? Isn’t that a little hyperbolic? How does computer software get you to breathe a language, exactly? Will I have to buy yet another computer device, some digital air tube thingie that I have to shove down my throat in order to operate? Do I also have to buy another stupid USB port adapter so it will work on my Mac? What if I gag easy when something is shoved down my throat? (I know, I know, that’s what she said, but if you could just work with me on this one). I’m just thinking that since I don’t even breathe English, it would be unlikely that even a highly advanced medical body scan would find Spanish words in my lung tissue.
So, in summary and conclusion, I can’t imagine why people would buy this astronomically priced product. No sane person I know would even think twice about it. And even though I’ve been wanting to learn Spanish for years now, I certainly could never bring myself to pay such a ludicrous amount of my own hard-earned money.
Which is why I’m asking for it for Christmas.
To all fellow bloggers…
I’d love to read what everyone really means to do in 2010. Come over any time starting Monday, December 28, 2009 and share your New Year’s Resolutions blog post URL in the Linky widget that will be provided on that Monday’s post. I call this sharing time the campaign.
For more information, or to grab a button to tell your friends about it, go to the .